Spotify now requires a Facebook login for new accounts

Facebook made a lot of announcements last week during the f8 conference, one of which was new partnerships with media and entertainment services. Spotify was on the list, allowing you to link your Facebook and Spotify accounts making it easy to share what music you listened to with your friends.

It’s a nice opt-in feature, right? Well, no. It turns out the feature, or at least the account link up, isn’t optional at all. Anyone trying to sign up for a new account with Spotify is now asked to supply a Facebook login. If you don’t, you can’t create an account.

Such a decision obviously sparked some chatter on the Spotify forums with someone asking how you sign up without a Facebook account. The response from Spotify is very clear: you can’t. From now on all new accounts require Facebook. If you don’t have a Facebook account you need to create one or do without both services.

The comments following that response from a Spotify employee have all been negative with users stating it is a ridiculous move. No further official comment has come from Spotify regarding why this is mandatory, so we can only assume it was part of the deal it made with Facebook to get the link up in the first place.

If you don’t use Facebook, but want a Spotify account, unfortunately you will have to set up a dummy Facebook account to get access. Existing account holders don’t seem to be affected by this new requirement, though.

While this may aid Spotify as a service in the short term, I have to wonder what it means for the longer term prospects of Spotify, especially if users get used to listening to tracks on Facebook pages, and then Facebook goes and implements its own music service at a later date.